Monday, August 26, 2013

"Not to sound braggy or anything, but I kind of killed it in college. You know that saying 'big fish in a small pond'? At Dartmouth College, I was freaking Jaws in a community swimming pool. I wrote plays, I acted, I sang, I was the student newspaper cartoonist. All this, of course, was less a function of my talent than of the school's being in rural New Hampshire, where the only option for real entertainment was driving one and a half hours to Manchester, on the off chance the Capitol Steps were touring there."

Saturday, August 24, 2013

"That does make her squirm a little. Dan probably wasn't counting on her digging up the details on the story of how he made his name mud with the cops. Turns out the police don't like it when you report on one of their own who accidentally discharges his weapon into a hooker's face while coked up to the eyeballs. Chet said the officer got early retirement. Dan got his tires slashed every time he parked at the precinct. Kirby is happy to discover she's not the only one with the ability to alienate the whole of the Chicago PD."

Friday, August 23, 2013

"He wasn't expecting Grebe to gush like that. Wouldn't have come to it if the bastard had fought fair. But he was fat and drunk and desperate. Couldn't land a punch, so he went for Harper's balls. Harper had felt the sonofabitch's thick fingers grabbing at his trousers. Man fights ugly, you fight uglier back. It's not Harper's fault the jagged edge of the glass caught an artery. He was aiming for Grebe's face."

Thursday, August 22, 2013

This
is the second time I’ve read Meghan McCarron’s “Swift, Brutal
Retaliation”, a story focused on the aftermath of the too young death of
the brother of Sinead and Brigid with both their escalating war of
pranks on each other as well as their desire to help the ghost of their
dead brother find peace.

That’s
a gross simplification, of course, and when you get down to the heart
of the story, what “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” seems to really be about
is grief. The grief of parents, the grief of sisters, the grief of the
deceased, and how that grief and anger manifests throughout a family.
How losing that son and brother through a drawn out illness changes the
dynamic, most likely irreparably.

“During
Ian’s last few months, their mother was usually busy taking care of
him. When he died, they had briefly hoped she would recover her interest
in their well-being, but instead her caring engines shut down
completely. She spent whole days in her room; the girls had no idea what
she did in there. If they put their ears to the door, they heard the
television, but they had the eerie feeling it wasn’t being watched.”

Told
mostly from the third person perspective of the sisters, “Swift, Brutal
Retaliation” is a story that begins a touch lighter than the subject
matter would suggest, but simmers at a slow burn and has a powerful,
explosive ending. Explicitly, there is a touch of the supernatural with
Ian’s ghost, but in this case it is one of the least important
supernatural elements in a story and very well may just be a
manifestation of the emotions of the family. Regardless of that, this
is a worthy story for the World Fantasy Award nomination.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

"These were days of pajamas and beard scruff, of mumblings and requests and him endlessly thanking everyone for all they were doing on his behalf. One afternoon, he pointed vaguely toward a laundry basket in a corner of the room and asked me, 'What's that?'

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was
depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot
of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and
devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."

Monday, August 19, 2013

"A life as full as Franklin's could not be captured in a phrase - or a volume. Yet if a few words had to suffice, a few words that summarized his legacy to the America he played such a central role in creating - and that, not incidentally, illustrated his wry, aphoristic style - they were those he uttered upon leaving the final session of the Constitutional Convention. A matron of Philadelphia demanded to know, after four months' secrecy, what he and the other delegates had produced.

Friday, August 16, 2013

I finished reading Demonstorm a couple of days ago and it made me think reader expectations and the ending of a series.

As
I understand it, James Barclay intended for Demonstorm to be the
conclusion to his Legends of the Raven trilogy. It ended the story of
The Raven, a mercenary band that saved the world on multiple occasions.
There an epilogue which set the tone for the future and it was one where
not only wasn’t The Raven needed, but it was one where they didn’t
really exist anymore. Which will make sense if you’ve read the books
and be fairly non-spoilery if you haven’t. Demonstorm was an ending and a concrete ending at that.

Of
course, what I had known all along is that there was still one more
book which was set ten or so years later: Ravensoul. I knew that long
before I read Dawnthief, but by the time I finished what now feels like
the “series proper”, I wasn’t sure why or how there could be another
book. As Barclay writes on his website,

A
quick scan down these bibliography entries will lead you to Demonstorm
and my assertion that it was to be the last Raven novel and that there
were no plans for more. Luckily, I also mentioned the immortal words
‘never say never’. Because, four years later, along came Ravensoul.

The
fact is that something began nagging at me almost from the moment
Demonstorm was done and dusted. That although I had written “The End”
for the last time in Raven history, it just wasn’t the end. For a
while I didn’t know why, but a bit like Vault of Deeds, the idea
wouldn’t go away and slowly, it took proper shape. In the days when
writing The Ascendants was particularily hard, I gave it considered
thought too.

I wanted The Raven to have one last ride…

Barclay
then goes on to give a little bit more detail about the ending of
Demonstorm then I want to go into here, but what I want to express is
that I feel very mixed regarding how I feel about this as a reader. I
have very much enjoyed Barclay’s work with the Raven novels (see here for my thoughts on the first three books),
and though I have seen a brief synopsis / cover copy on Ravensoul and
know approximately how the story is continuing, Barclay finished the
series. He finished the story.

Obviously,
James Barclay disagrees with me since he wrote another novel set ten
years after and who am I to say that the author is wrong for having more
stories he wants to tell?

It’s not even that I don’t want to read more Raven stories. It’s just that he wrote a book that had such an ending,
to the point that the idea there is more feels something of a let down
or a refusal to let go. Part of this has to do with a specific story
point that because it occurs so late in the series, but is absolutely
key as to why having a sequel comes across as somewhat offputting to the
reader, or, at least to this one.

Of
course, if Ravensoul is up to the level of quality the first six books
hit most of this is moot and I’ll accept it. But there is that niggling
part of the reader brain that thinks that no matter how good Ravensoul
is, things should have ended where they were originally intended to.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

“I should have stuck around to discover the nature of that soil for
myself – but I belong with the liars and weaklings. I cannot lead my
betters. If I want to be a hero, it will not be to the jocks, whose
interiors have an integrity that springs up from the very center of the
earth itself. It will be to the utter liars I find myself here, in the
white-walled room that is the typing school’s second-floor studio.”

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The nominations for the 2013 World Fantasy Awards have been announced, and while I have been less active in the SFF scene this last year or two, this has long been my favorite of the genre awards. Congratulations to all the nominees, and I can't wait to dive in to these.

Friday, August 09, 2013

"'What are you asking me, exactly?' Gudrun said. 'Why do I think the problems between the men and women of the world are the way they are today? You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feel - will they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching? Is that what you are asking me?

Goodman shifted in discomfort. 'Something like that,' he said.

'Yes,' said the counselor in a suddenly plangent voice. 'Always they will be aching. I wish I could tell you something else, but I wouldn't be telling the truth. My wife and gentle friends, this is the way it will be from now on.'"

Thursday, August 08, 2013

"Jules. There it was, right there: the effortless shift that made all the difference. Shy, suburban nonentity Julie Jacobson, who had provoked howls for the first time in her life, had suddenly, lightly changed into Jules, which was a far better name for an awkward-looking fifteen-year-old girl who'd become desperate for people to pay attention to her. these people had no idea of what she was usually called; they'd hardly noticed her in these first days of camp, though of course she'd noticed them. In a new environment, it was possible to transform. Jules, Ash had called her, and instantly the others followed Ash's lead. She was Jules now, and would be Jules forever."

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

"Abumwe began by tearing Doodoodo a new one, in as brilliant a show of venomous politeness as Wilson had ever seen in his life. Doodoodo and his fellow negotiators actually began to cringe, in the Burfinor fashion, which Wilson decided was more of a scrotal-like contraction than anything else.

Watching the ambassador do her work, and doing it with something approaching vengeful joy, Wilson realized his long-held wish that Abumwe would actually relax from time to time was clearly in error. This was a person who operated best and most efficiently when she was truly and genuinely pissed off; wishing for her to mellow out was like wishing an alpha predator would switch to grains. It was missing the point."